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Lies, Damn Lies, and Battery-Life Statistics

Posted by kdawson on from the guilty-as-charged dept.

theodp writes "What if automakers measured gas mileage by rolling their cars downhill with their engines idling? They might, Newsweek's Daniel Lyons suggests, if they took inspiration from the MobileMark 2007 notebook battery-life benchmark test, the creation of a consortium called BAPCo, whose members are — surprise — computer makers and other tech companies. Laptops score big numbers, Lyons explains, because they're tested with screens dimmed to 20%-30% of full brightness, Wi-Fi turned off, and the main processor chip running at 7.5% of capacity. Professional reviewers see company-generated battery-life claims as a joke. 'The rule of thumb is that in real-world use you get about 50 percent of rated battery life,' says a Gizmodo associate editor. Leading the call for reform is the not-necessarily-altruistic AMD, who gripes that MM07 was created in Intel's labs and rigged so Intel chips would outscore AMD chips, which draw more power when idle."

6 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Who did this study? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Captain Obvious?

  2. gas mialage by He+who+knows · · Score: 5, Funny

    They would need a really big hill.

  3. Apple Don't by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take a look at Anandtech's MBP review. The tagline 'Battery life to die for' sort of gives away the tale though.

    Apple claim 5-8 hours. Anand got 4.92 (heavy downloading + XVid + Web browsing) to 8.13 hours (Wireless web browsing) with the screen at half-brightness ("completely useable") and no funny optimisations.

    Maybe, just maybe, there's something to this "our batteries are better" thing they've got going; if someone comes out with a spare-battery-attached-to-a-magsafe-connector for those die-hards who absolutely *need* it, angels may sing in the treetops. Personally I've never needed to change the battery in my portable (whatever portable I've had) so it's no big deal to me. Yadda yadda, one datapoint not a trend...

    Simon.

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:Apple Don't by wnknisely · · Score: 5, Informative

      For what it's worth, I'm seeing numbers comparable to these on my new Macbook pro. Perhaps Apple is using a different benchmark than the one in the article above?

      --
      In illa quae ultra sunt
  4. I don't trust Apple's sealed-in batteries by argent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I will never buy a laptop with a non-removable battery even if it gets 8 hours playing MMOs at full resolution. I *have* a Macbook Pro, and if it had an "iBattery" my laptop would have been destroyed when the battery failed and swelled... instead of having the battery pop safely out of its compartment.

    Better battery, great, but I'll take a laptop that's a millimeter thicker if that's what it takes to put a door on the battery compartment.

  5. Re:Apple doesn't trust other batteries by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't seriously expect that the internal battery is any more "apple manufactured" than the removable battery was, do you?

    Apple, like pretty much all the domestic PC brands, has little to no manufacturing capacity in-house. Possibly some prototyping, and likely some customization/assembly; but all the serious manufacturing is handled by a bunch of OEMs and their suppliers. The cells will be sourced from some third party in any case.